In a performance that was reminiscent of his 2020 final against Djokovic, played in October due to the pandemic, Nadal came out looking to dominate. He feasted on the plentiful second serves by Djokovic and powered through both the wings.
They came in for a thriller. What they got was another masterclass in match management.
It was five in the morning in India by the time Rafael Nadal punched the backhand down the line, the final winner of his 6-2, 4-6, 6-2, 7-6(4) win over Novak Djokovic. And at the end of the long four hours — the exact match time was four hours and 12 minutes — several plot twists, and a million pressure points later there is a temptation to label the 59th installment of this storied rivalry an ‘epic’.
But only one man brought the ‘epic’ on Tuesday night. Not surprisingly, at Roland Garros, at his beloved Court Phillippe-Chatrier it was Nadal who reached for the sky. World No 1 Djokovic resisted, he threatened, for a brief period even matched the 13-time champion shot-for-shot. But it was all too fleeting, like footprints on the claycourt.
Coming into their quarterfinal clash, there were question marks over Nadal’s fitness. The Spaniard has been plagued with a recurring foot injury since last year and was, unexpectedly, taken to five sets by Felix Auger-Aliassime in the previous round. After scripting victory against the Canadian youngster, an emotional Nadal wondered if Tuesday would be his last match at Roland Garros, even his career.
The French Open seemingly didn’t do the most successful player ever in the Grand Slam any favours by scheduling his match in the night session. The heavy night-time conditions were deemed more favourable for Djokovic; experts claimed that the colder air would stop Nadal from putting that many RPMs on the ball, take away the top spin and the bite. The man himself had confessed his dislike for night sessions.
None of that, however, stopped him from charging out of the gates. What foot injury? What conditions? Sporting a lime green tee-shirt, Nadal was as bright as ever at Roland Garros.
In a performance that was reminiscent of his 2020 final against Djokovic, played in October due to the pandemic, Nadal came out looking to dominate. He feasted on the plentiful second serves by Djokovic and powered through both the wings. After dismantling the World No 1 in the opening set, Nadal stormed to a 3-0 with two breaks of serve.
The Serb, who played just one tournament in the first three months of 2022, was too passive, his serve too inconsistent. But like he had in last year’s semi-final against Nadal, which he won in four sets after losing the opening set, Djokovic started to chip at the Spaniard. He started taking the ball further up in the court, started getting his teeth into the rallies.
This was more familiar, the two warriors drawing each other into battle. The rallies started getting longer, so did the games. Djokovic started punching holes in Nadal’s defence and his confidence. He drew a forehand error from Nadal to create a break point at in the fourth game, then earned his first break of the match as the Spaniard dumped a drop shot into the net. In the next game, Djokovic battled back from 15-30 down and let out his first roar of the match.
The importance of the next game was not lost on either, as they traded punches for more than 18 minutes. It looked like Djokovic had Nadal on the ropes as a tired backhand from the Spaniard saw Djokovic go level at 3-3. After 54 mins in the set, that’s where the score stood. Djokovic had found his range and he started punishing the short balls from Nadal. With his short-angle forehand and backhand firing, Djokovic was dictating the points. He turned the set around to win it 6-4.
While that inspired play from Djokovic, from 0-3 down, was what we have come to expect of him, he couldn’t sustain the level long enough. It was the error-ridden Djokovic who returned to the court in the third set and lost eight out of the next 10 points. Despite the odds stacked against him, and the pro-Nadal audience in Paris was one on Tuesday, Djokovic is known to stand the pressure.
But the Serb, who finished with 53 unforced errors in the match, was brilliant only in spurts. Apart from the incredible second-set comeback, he tried to make a match out of it by racing to a 4-1 lead in the fourth set. He was not solid enough, consistent enough, though to plant seeds of doubt in Nadal’s mind. His stubbornness to continue with drop shots, which brought him very little success against Nadal, was baffling.
On the flipside, Nadal’s defence was exemplary and his aggression tempered. Whenever Djokovic raised his game, the Spaniard was quick to catch up. After squandering a lead in the second set, Nadal started the third with looser strings and a more attacking outlook. There was no panic, no rush. Every time the Serb pushed him on the backfoot, Nadal came out fighting. The wheels as quick as ever. The bite was back into the groundstrokes.
Nadal’s defence meant Djokovic had to go for the line, for a little extra, almost every single time. On Tuesday night, with Nadal in the mood, he just couldn’t find that third, fourth, or fifth winner in his arsenal. With the pressure to make the first serve building, Djokovic threw in an uncharacteristically nervy service game at 5-3 in the fourth set. Nadal saved two set points and earned the break back with an angled forehand that Djokovic had no reply to.
The writing was on the wall. The crowd, huddled in blankets on the cool Parisian night, was on their feet. The passive, tentative Djokovic of the first set was back. And Nadal was circling around him, waiting to go in for the kill. The tie-breaker started with Djokovic missing the forehand down the line, the shot had brought him very little joy on the day, and ended with an emphatic backhand winner for Nadal. It neatly summed up the match.
“It was a very tough match, Novak is one of the best players in history, and all the history we have,” said an emotional Nadal, who finished with 57 winners. “There is only one way to beat Novak and that is to play at your best.” The Spaniard had kept his end of the bargain.
The pity was that Nadal didn’t have a trophy to show at the end of it. But with the biggest challenger out of the way, the record-extending 22nd Grand Slam title should come soon enough.
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